Why the New 3DS is the handheld we deserve right now

Jesse from Save/Continue argues why he thinks the New 3DS is a step in the right direction for Nintendo. He says,

"This reinvigorated focus on the hardcore gaming market can help bring Nintendo back to the days of yore, when everyone had an NES in their house, complete with moms and dads yelling at their kids to “shut off that Nintendo!” "

It's really a split bag, on this one... As an early adopter of the DS line, I've been waiting since the launch of the original DS, for a hand-held powerful enough to run games like Mario Galaxy and Xenoblade Chronicles.

But everywhere I go lately, I see people, who waited waaaaaaayyyyy too long to upgrade, saying that Nintendo is "betraying them" by making this system.

Now, granted, I DO see and agree somewhat with the side that says this should have been what the 3DS was to begin with. I would have loved that. But there's likely a few good reasons why the first 3DS was not like the New one is going to be, and most of those reasons are probably going to relate to either team experience in making more powerful systems being a slow progress, or costs of parts small yet powerful enough to make this a thing being too costly for Nintendo's tastes at the time. Keep in mind; from all reports, Nintendo is likely going to be putting out this new iteration of the 3DS line for the same price as the old one, which is big considering you'd expect to pay much more for an upgrade that allows home-console-level games, not less. They probably had to wait until the price of the parts was in a manageable zone before they could offer such a thing.

There's only two mistakes I'm seeing Nintendo making with this; Putting out new iterations of the old 3DS when they should instead be moving up production of the unit to the states so that we could get those new iterations in the New format, and not putting out an official statement that makes it CLEAR to consumers that they ARE NOT abandoning the old 3DS line, and that they WILL continue to create games that are compatible with it for a while more yet.[because they will. They'd be stupid NOT to, what with its sales thus far]

In the end, as an early adopter, I'm happy that something new is coming and I hold very little sympathy for people villainizing Nintendo for making it, even if I do understand that mistakes are being made with how it's being delivered. I won't go trying to convince those people to buy it. But I'm not going to be swayed from playing Xenoblade on the go, either.

At the end of the day, the question and the answer are both quite simple.

Do you want to play games like Xenoblade and Mario Galaxy on the go, with more options, and can you still see the current prices of the 3DS as affordable? If so, the New 3DS is a good buy. If not, then stick with what you've got, since it won't have it's support dropped for a long while yet.

The N3DS is like a half-generation step up. A stopgap measure, like the N64's expansion pack. Its not likely to get many games or to exist long before Nintendo moves out their "real" next generation handheld in 2-4 years.

The biggest problem with the N3DS is what in means for backwards compatibility. Nintendo wants all of their systems to be at least one generation BC, so when the third generation DS rolls out, will it be unable to play normal 3DS games?

In my mind, even though it's powerful enough to get games that the old 3DS cannot, I don't think that it's so far a leap that the next more powerful handheld will be incapable of emulating the old 3DS hardware. It's not a leap like the 3DS was from the DS. It's just enough to make bigger games possible.

In the end, it'll all come down to the architecture of their next really "big" handheld. Though I wouldn't be surprised, if it sells well enough, if Nintendo makes this one last a good 5 or so years just BECAUSE it can handle console-level games like Xenoblade.

I guess time will tell, but Nintendo, out of all the companies, has so far shown the best forms of support for previous generations of software, even if the prices for some of their digital offerings are questionable. I don't think we'll have much to worry about in regards to native BC, from Nintendo.

Of course it will be able to play normal 3DS games. If it can play the new 3DS games there is nothing stopping it from playing the normal ones. The new 3DS isn't using a different kind of processor as in the case of PS2 to PS3 and PS3 to PS4 which is why those aren't backwards compatible. The new 3DS simply has more processing power. It would most likely be easier for a new Nintendo handheld to play normal 3ds games as opposed to the new ones.

The Vita and the 3DS provide different experiences when it comes to portable gaming. I just really prefer the experience offered on the Vita. I respect that a lot of people prefer the 3DS (however, I just don't understand why). And I even own a 3DS, I just can't find anything worthwhile to play on it other than Mario Kart occasionally.

But yes, there are plenty of great games everywhere. That is something we can all agree on.

Too bad the system is region locked, and that is a huge No No in this day and age. When you live in Europe and a device is region locked you'll be lucky if you get even 1/3 of the games released for a system that is mostly populated by Japanese games.